◼ The White House is not conceding that by focusing on Mr. Romney, it aimed its initial attacks at the wrong opponent. But in taking on Mr. Gingrich as well, it is underscoring its determination to play an active role in the opposing party’s primary.
Obama’s political advisers emphasized that they believed the broad contours of the race would be the same between the president and Mr. Gingrich as they would be between the president and Mr. Romney. But, they said, Mr. Gingrich’s rocky tenure in the mid- to late 1990s would provide a particularly juicy target that could help portray him as a symbol of the past.
“It wasn’t that long ago, and the debates and the tactics were very much what we’re dealing with today,” Mr. Axelrod said Wednesday during a question and answer session in Manhattan sponsored by Bloomberg View, the opinion section of Bloomberg News. “I mean it was shutting down the government in order to defund the E.P.A., and to defund education programs and to cut Medicare in order to give tax cuts to the wealthy. These guys are in the back-to-the-future machine.”
Mr. Gingrich, through a spokesman, declined to reply to the criticism. He spent the day in Washington, trying to persuade conservative leaders that he was the party’s strongest nominee. In an interview with CNN’s Wolf Blitzer, he renewed his call to challenge the president to seven three-hour debates in the general election.
“We’ll see how they feel about it,” Mr. Gingrich said.
